Unbuilt London: The Transport Schemes That Never Were

Dean NicholasUnbuilt London: The Transport Schemes That Never WereThis proposal for an airport next to the Houses of Parliament dates from the 1930s.Model for the King's Cross Aerodrome.A heliport at Charing Cross? Seems a great idea. Monorail scheme in Regent's Street, 1960s.A scheme from the 1930s for a giant car park on top of Trafalgar Square. Barmy, but the noise and fumes would presumably have kept the pigeons at bay.Unused spurs off the Westway. They would have linked to Ringway 1, an elevated motorway circumnavigating most of central London.Cross-River Tram, a north-south tram scheme pioneered by Ken Livingstone. It was axed by Boris Johnson in 2008.The Great Victorian Way, a "girdle" around central London that would have encased shops, railways and roads in a huge glass hemisphere. Its route would have broadly followed the Circle line.The Thames Viaduct Railway, running on cast iron piers along the middle of the Thames from London Bridge (L) to Westminster Bridge (R).The Crystal WayA 1970s plan for Hammersmith Broadway by Norman Foster.

A short series in which we document the haphazard schemes, the outrageous ideas, the inspired projects and the ridiculous brainfarts that planners, developers and entrepreneurs have tried to foist on London.

In the first part of Unbuilt London, we take a look at the transport schemes that never quite made it off the drawing board. From monorails to raised motorways, heliports to pneumatic propulsion railways: herein lie schemes good, bad and mad that, for one reason or other, never lived to see the light of day.

A note on our methodology: Obviously we haven't included every single kooky transport scheme. But we've tried to include most of the significant ones, those which would have impacted on the city, and those that we just plain loved or loathed. If you think there's anything we should have included, drop us a note in the comments.

Kings Cross Aerodrome, Westminster Airport & Charing Cross Heliport

One would assume that, in the 1930s, airplanes had an exemplary safety record, to judge by the willingness with which planners entertained the idea of building major airports in the middle of London. Here are some examples.

The first is a proposal for an 'aerodrome' at King's Cross, half a kilometre in diameter; as recorded in the 12th June, 1931 edition of Flight magazine, it would be a "huge central air and rail terminus on a site now occupied by railway sidings near King's Cross and St. Pancras stations".

The second is even more improbable: a platform of runways erected on stilts above the Thames at Westminster Bridge. Handy for an MP anxious to escape to his Tuscan bolthole, less helpful for those on the ground disinclined toward having the din of propellers as a constant companion.

By the time the 1950s came around, the helicopter was poised to relieve the plane as the popular mode of transport. A pressing need arose, therefore, for a heliport, such as the one pictured above jutting out over Charing Cross station and part of the Thames. Notes the accompanying blurb: "[it includes] radar aids to help landing in London's pea-soup fogs". A reassuring message for those nervy flyers.

More recently, a late-1970s scheme by Norman Foster involved the complete destruction of Hammersmith Broadway (no bad thing, some might argue) and its replacement with an enormous new transport interchange-cum-office block, with a bus and Tube station at the base and a helicopter landing pad at the top. Despite the architect reputedly trousering £1m for the design work, it was rejected.

Unbuilt Tube stations

Some stations get to reappear in ghost form. Others don't even survive gestation. Some are planned and never built, but none got as close to a rendering on the Tube map as North End. Also known as Bull and Bush (after a local hostelry), the station was proposed in 1903 to serve a new residential area between Hampstead and Golders Green. However, when the new area fell through, work on the station ceased. Photographs from a 2002 site visit can be seen here.

Several other stations were planned, but never built, for the aborted Northern Heights extension to Edgware; this excellent video explains the project fully.

Monorail Schemes

Over the years there have been a number of schemes to bring monorails to the capital. Pictured in the gallery above is one floated in 1967 by the GLC Department of Highways and Transportation, which envisioned a monorail route running down Regent Street and Piccadilly (see the Wuppertal monorail for an idea of what it might have looked like). There was also a more recent plan from 2006 that pictured a route crossing the Thames at Waterloo Bridge. Sadly there's little chance of either being built any time soon, so we'll just have to leave the monorail and all the joy it brings to those lucky folk in North Haverbrook.

The Trafalgar Square Car Park

If you're of the opinion that modern town planners have scant respect for the masterpieces of the past, consider what they thought of doing to Trafalgar Square in the 1930s. Turning it into a giant car park must have seemed the height of modernity at the time.

London Ringways

Love it or loathe it, the Westway is a major part of London's road infrastructure. Had the original planners got their way, we would have had a lot more of it. The Westway was a precursor to London Ringways, a series of four ring roads planned during the 1960s that would have circumnavigated the capital. Ringway 1 would have seen a raised concrete motorway gripping central London like a noose. The plan was cancelled in 1971; however, remnants of the scheme remain in the form of partially-constructed spurs that lead nowhere in particular (see gallery above for an example). The Ringways are imaginatively explored in this video, and if that doesn't slake your interest, read this detailed explanation.

Cross River Tram

One of Ken Livingstone's key transport projects was this tram network, linking Camden to Peckham and Brixton via King's Cross, Holborn, and Waterloo Bridge. The tram was one of the first projects smote by Boris Johnson when he became Mayor, and though there is a chance the project will be resurrected at some point in the future (Livingstone has said he'll re-start it if he wins in 2012), it's not likely to happen for some time.

Thames Railway Viaduct

In the 1860s, in order to eschew the ever-expensive demolition costs for building in London, a pair of engineers, James Samuel and John M. Heppel, proposed to build a railway down the middle of the Thames. Supported by cast iron piers, the Thames Railway Viaduct would link London Bridge with Westminster Bridge, via a series of intermediary stations. The railway could, engineers boasted, be finished in just two years, with a single road being obstructed. Alas, their optimism was never to be tested, although Messrs Samuel and Heppel would no doubt be pleased to learn that, 150 years later, London will welcome its first Thames-straddling station, when the new Blackfriars Bridge opens in 2012.

The Crystal Way & the Great Victorian Way

Proposed around 1855, the Crystal Way was a covered railway-cum-shopping mall, with the locomotives running beneath and the arcade running above. Clearly taking its inspiration from the recently-completed Crystal Palace, the Crystal Way would have run from Cheapside to Oxford Circus, with a branch line to Seven Dials. Around the same time, the Great Victorian Way, proposed by Joseph Paxton, designer of the Crystal Palace, also gained traction. To quote the authors of London As It Might Have Been, this was a ten-mile "girdle round the whole of central London", with eight lines, a road and shops and houses located within the ornate glass-and-steel frame. Its route would have followed much of what later became the Circle line.

Atmospheric Propulsion

In the early days of the locomotive industry, various plans were hatched to improve upon what was seen as a rickety and unreliable technology (how times change). One of them was an atmospheric-propulsion system, which was trialled in Croydon. In 1844 the London and Croydon Railway built a pumping station beside Jolly-sailor station (now Norwood Junction) and began to run tests. But the company merged with the London and Brighton Railway in 1849, and the plan was abandoned.

In future Unbuilt London posts we'll be looking at skyscrapers, bridges, and other assorted projects.